Faux Taxidermy Unicorn

Art (C) to me, no stealing! Photo kindly provided by my tutor, Simon Atkinson.

Historical Prop - Block Two - HND Modelmaking for the Creative Industries.

Materials used:
Blue Foam, Fur Fabric, Tibetan Mohair, blank glass Taxidermy eyes, leather, mohair, Super Sculpey, tinfoil, flocking powder, acrylic paints and MDF.

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For our second block at college this year we had to create a 'Historical Prop' that had something to do with Scottish Heritage. It could be a faithful reproduction of an actual object, an 'as new' version of one or as a completely fictitious thing based in mythology or from our own imaginations (think films like The Lord of the Rings - the people of Rohan are very Norse-inspired) - as long as we could show a clear line of thinking from something historical we could really do pretty much anything!

We visited Stirling Castle a few days before the start of the project for inspiration and found surprisingly little as the castle didn't have nearly as many artefacts as we remembered. We ended up going to Kelvingrove Museum the following day as well and it was whilst admiring some of the mounted specimens in the Natural History gallery that it came to me. Whilst at Stirling there'd been one thing, one recurring theme that I hadn't picked up on until that very moment and something that, if I was allowed to make, would absolutely make my day if not my year.

The Unicorn is the national animal of Scotland and plays a symbolic role throughout the centuries - especially during the various wars with the English! I had a sudden flash of inspiration and wondered if I'd be able to get away with doing a mounted Unicorn's head in much the same way as you see deer stags mounted on the walls of big stately homes and castles. I asked Simon, fully expecting to be shot down but he said that so long as I could relate it back to Scottish heritage I was absolutely fine! XD

I blogged about it as I went along so feel free to have a look. There are more finished photos in the last part, though I'd recommend looking at all of them to fully appreciate how long it took! XD

Part 1. [link]
Part 2. [link]
Part 3. [link]
Part 4. [link]
Part 5. [link]
Part 6. [link]
Part 7. [link]
Part 8. [link]

Looooads of in progress photos of this and my other college projects on my Flickr set here - [link]